China Stone Association: Industry Status and Future Development Direction

With the development of China's economy in the past 30 years of China's reform and opening up, China's stone industry has also experienced more than 20 years of development, and it is time to transform and upgrade. How to grasp the opportunities and challenges of the development of the stone industry and develop better in the future? On this theme, on the afternoon of August 28, 2013, the 2013 China Stone Development Opportunity Summit Forum was successfully held on the first floor of the Doubletree Hotel Kunshan. Experts and scholars from the stone industry gathered together for a heated discussion.

Zou Chuansheng, President of China Stone Association, made a speech:

The concept of modern stone industry

I am very happy to participate in this summit forum. This year is exactly the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the China Stone Association. I have been involved in the stone industry for more than ten years. It should be said that the stone industry in China is also very old. Many structures and stone carvings depicting the history of Chinese civilization reflect the stone industry. The real modern stone industry in China was developed in the process of economic cooperation between China and Italy after the reform and opening up. China began to introduce advanced equipment and management experience from Italy, using stone for decorative engineering and facing stone. Of course, Thanks to the invention and application of synthetic diamonds, there is a way to process brittle materials, so that the stone can be cut like metal. Basically, the current stone is a kind of cold processing from mining to stone processing. This is the concept of the modern stone industry.

Economic background of the development of the stone industry

Over the years, as China's urbanization construction has expanded from the eastern region to the central and western regions, this market has greatly stimulated the stone industry. The annual sales income of enterprises above designated size in the stone industry (annual sales income of more than 20 million yuan) has reached nearly 300 billion. Through the exchanges with the China Association, we know that many enterprises in China's stone industry are enterprises below the scale (annual sales income of less than 20 million yuan). For various reasons, many enterprises are reluctant to become enterprises above designated size, and a business owner prefers to register. There are many enterprises below the scale, so the economic aggregate of enterprises below the scale of China's stone industry still has 300 billion. This figure is an estimate made after exchanges with the China National Association. The amount of stone in the entire building decoration project is about 560 billion yuan, and the import and export trade is 8 billion dollars. The development of our stone industry is now developed in the context of such an investment pull or export pull.

What node has the stone industry developed now?

The development strategy of our country has now undergone a transformation, from investment-led export to domestic demand and consumption. For the stone industry, consumption pull mainly refers to living and living in the food, clothing and housing. For example, the interior and exterior wall decoration in a high-grade public works and home decoration project includes paving, stone carving in garden construction, municipal engineering, billboards, square bricks, roadside stones, etc., and now most of them are replaced by stone. Cement and other materials are no longer used. Domestic demand for stone is still very large. At present, the level of urbanization in the eastern part of China is already high, and the degree of urbanization in the central and western regions is still relatively low. Urbanization provides a good opportunity for development of stone, and the development of the stone industry provides a good industrial support for urbanization. China's several major stone bases, urbanization has developed rapidly. For example, Shuitou was originally a small seaside town. Now it is already spread over four-star five-star hotels, because the stone industry provides a construction for the water head. Very good industry support. How to adapt to the needs of national urbanization construction and the need of consumption, this is a problem that the stone industry needs to think about.

Second, when the stone industry has gone from extensive development mode to building a resource-saving and environment-friendly development mode, how should we save resources and scientific mining?

In the past, mining in China was a brutal predatory mining method. China's stone industry has come to a node: it is to adapt to the transfer of the country's entire development strategy, and is now in a period of shifting and upgrading. The original development speed is now in the mid-range. Since 2000, the growth rate has been 30% or even 40%. After the financial crisis in 2008, the growth rate has been reduced to 20%, and 12 years have been 10% since this year. We believe that such growth may not happen again, but it will still be higher than the growth rate of GDP. I am still more confident in this, because of the urbanization, the adjustment of the consumption structure of residents and the improvement of consumer demand. What we need to solve is how to adapt to the requirements of resource conservation and environmental friendliness, and present the true face of the stone industry. For example, Yin Zong engaged in this Donghua Global Stone Market is the original face of the stone market, rather than the original face that was not made well due to lack of regulation and management.

The third is to adjust the structure. We can't focus our attention on the engineering market, but also the home improvement stone market. Home improvement may be the bigger market for the stone industry in the future. Home improvement stone and tooling stone should be equal.